1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method for fabricating a MOSFET and more particularly to method for fabricating a lightly doped drain (LDD) MOSFET.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, with larger and larger scale of semiconductor integrated circuit devices (ICs), MOSFETs used as circuit elements have been becoming remarkably scaled down. This however is not simply accompanied by appropriate supply voltage scaling because interfaces between IC circuit devices must be standardized. For the semiconductor ICs therefore are being required device designs for enabling enough prevention of hot carrier effects of causing device degradation and for ensuring the reliability.
In general the LDD-MOSFET structure having a lightly doped (hence electric field-lowered) region between the drain region and the gate electrode is used. In common LDD-MOSFETs, a lightly doped region is formed also between the source region and the gate electrode.
The method for fabricating such a conventional LDD-MOSFET will be described below.
For example, field oxide films are formed by local oxidation on the surface of a p-type silicon substrate. In the thus-isolated area in which a MOSFET is to be built (referred to as MOSFET-formed area hereinafter), a gate oxide film is formed and thereon a polysilicon film as gate electrode is deposited. After gate patterning, lightly-doped source and drain regions are formed by ion implantation. A silicon oxide film is deposited by CVD technique, followed by anisotropic etching, to form sidewall spacers at both sidewalls of the gate electrode. By the second ion implantation, heavily-doped source and drain regions are formed.
With decreasingly lightly-doped source and drain regions for reducing the generation amount of hot carriers, the parasitic resistance associated with the above-mentioned symmetrical LDD-MOSFET becomes greater. The saturation MOSFET-drain current is affected little by the parasitic resistance of the drain region, and greatly by the effective gate voltage drop due to the parasitic resistance of the source region.
Reduction of the on-current because of this can be avoided by implementation of an asymmetrical LDD-MOSFET with a lightly-doped region only at the drain region side of the gate. As an approach for fabricating an asymmetrical LDD-MOSFET by a modified process to the above-mentioned, a concept will instantly emerge that the sidewall spacer on the source side may be removed before ion implantation for forming heavily-doped source and drain regions. This needs an extra etching and the associated mask (such as photoresist film) formation, and hence can not be said to be proper.
Another approach is one that heavy-dose ion implantation previous to forming sidewall spacers is done only on the source side using a mask such as photoresist film formed for it. The formation of a heavily doped drain region is performed after forming sidewall spacers. Therefore, additional photolithography and high-dose ion implantation are needed. For CMOS ICs having come into general use in these days, these processing steps are added in fabrication of n-channel and p-channel MOSFETs, respectively, and thereby the whole process has become complicated.